Flux and Flow
January 19th through February 19th, 2021
Details:
O’Sullivan Art Gallery
Fine Arts Building
Regis University
3333 Regis Blvd.
Denver, CO
Visiting Hours:
Mondays and Wednesdays: 9 am to 5 pm
Fridays: 9 am to 1 pm
Tuesdays and Thursdays: by appointment (contact Julia Rymer)
Online Artist Talk and Gallery Tour:
January 28th, 10:15 am MST, Facebook Live
Exhibition Statement
“Citizens of two realms, we all must sustain a dual allegiance: we sense the ineffable in one realm, we name and exploit reality in another. Between the two we set up a system of references, but we can never fill the gap. They are as far and as close to each other as time and calendar; as violin and melody, as life and what lies beyond the last breath.” ~ Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel
My work embraces the flux and flow of life and nature, the cycles of birth and growth, death and decomposition, rebirth and movement through time. They are a record and the result of my struggle and reconciliation between the material and spiritual realms, moving from friction and resistance into fluidity, like Jacob wrestling with the angel, only to emerge the next morning into a transcendent moment. Each piece I create evolves like geological strata, layers building up over time, cultivating structure in the overall composition. I think of my work as research; much as Josef Albers spoke of his work, saying “All my painting is actually study. The longer I do it, the more and more it is endless.
My creative practice manifests the spiritual and emotional into the physical, much like the Impressionistic, Post-Impressionistic and Abstract Expressionistic techniques in which I trained. Working in painting, drawing and fiber art, my thoughts, feelings and experience become solid, tangible and visceral. They hearken back to the primal urge we humans have to create, to take from our mind and memories and make something real. Analog in a digital world, my marks are the marks of time, my forms and shapes a record of things gone; my colors are fleeting thoughts, my stitches are emotional maps of lived experience.
By engaging with the natural world through art, I ask if art needs to reflect our digital society, or if it can exist outside of it, in connection with nature. What if art was unapologetically feminine, beautiful and emotional? What if art gave you the same experience as meditation or walking in the woods? What if art was a place to diffuse, rather than jar your senses?
In recent works, references to my Jewish spiritual practices suggest this connection. Jewish holidays, rituals and traditions are often in tandem with the seasons, times of harvest and rain, and even the phases of the moon. Based on the natural world themselves, these ancient practices embody birth and death and decay, growth and transformation, and are a means to building a deeper relationship with nature, time and ourselves.
To exist between the dual realms, bridging the worlds of the spiritual and the physical, we must open up to flux of life, and flow towards the transformation that is possible. My artworks center themselves in the human essence of existence, in our place in nature, as part of it – slow, deliberate, and real.
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